i see how some people have been using this program with no problems, good for you, but my story is a little bit different.

i downloaded the Big Bang Checkers and Chess, after trying to play the checkers game on my 1GHz powerbook (os x 10.4.5) for a few minutes at awful, awful slow speed i gave up. clicking on the same checker for 5 or 6 seconds before you can finally pick it up, etc. it was like playing checkers in molasses

the problems didn't start until i launched Big Bang Chess. after the annoying countdown for the trial version (complete with a whiny 'aww' when i didnt click 'buy') it immediately crashed on me. everytime i'd relaunch (i only tried it 3 times) i noticed the 'number of launches left in trial period' had reduced. it was counting each individual crash as a successful launch. lovely.

naturally i tossed it and the other big bang products i had D/L'ed in the trash immediately.

BUT THE FUN DOESN"T END THERE...

i am currently running a completely clean install of Tiger on a new drive. it has only been up for a few days and was giving me zero problems. until this big bang chess garbage screwed it up. suddenly Mail.app, IChat.app, Addressbook.app and Adium.app were all dead. they would immediately crash on startup and give the same error that Big Bang Chess was giving in it's crash report:

Thread: 0

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x7a8a2400

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ...apple.AddressBook.framework 0x93363708 c4_FormatB::Define (int, unsigned char const**) + 212


Gee, isn't that a coincidence.

finally, the only thing that fixed the problem after numerous attempts at trashing prefs, restarting, fixing permissions (took forever because so many of them were messed up suddenly) was replacing the Address Book.app with a clean copy from the hard drive i had just removed. i didn't need to replace the prefs or support files, it looks like it was the application itself that had been mangled.

i gotta say, i'm not a big fan of an overpriced shareware app that behaves more like a Trojan Horse. any application that can do that kind of damage to my Address Book is not coming near any of my machines again. that said, it looks like some people are using and enjoying it without trouble, but like they say, your mileage may vary. mine certainly did.